it not be as a tale with thee
That there is no help for the fate of the Gael.

This, Patrick, is my own quarrel with thee
That every enemy of thy flock is saying
That thy ears are not ears that listen,
That thou art not troubled by the sight of thy people,
That if they did trouble thee thou wouldst not deny them.
Be with us nevertheless with thy strong power.
Make our enemies to quit Ireland for ever.

1900.

MOUNTAIN THEOLOGY

Mary Glyn lives under Slieve-nan-Or, the Golden Mountain, where the last
battle will be fought in the last great war of the world; so that the
sides of Gortaveha, a lesser mountain, will stream with blood. But she
and her friends are not afraid of this; for an old weaver from the
north, who knew all things, told them long ago that there is a place
near Turloughmore where war will never come, because St. Columcill used
to live there. So they will make use of this knowledge, and seek a
refuge there, if, indeed, there is room enough for them all. There is a
river by her house that marks the boundary between Galway and Clare; and
there are stepping-stones in the river, so that she can cross from
Connaught to Munster when she has a mind. But she cannot do her
marketing when she has a mind; for the nearest town, Gort, is ten miles
away. The roof of her little cabin is thatched with rushes, and a garden
of weeds grows on it, and the rain comes through. But she is soon to
have a new thatch; for she thinks she won't live long, and she wouldn't
like the rain to be coming down on her when she is dead and laid out.
There is heather in blow on the hills about her home, and foxglove
reddens the clay-banks, and loosetrife the marshy hollows; and
rush-cotton waves its little white flags over the bogs. Mary Glyn's
neighbours come to see her sometimes, when the sun is going down, and
the hurry of the day is over. Old Mr. Saggarton is one of them; he had
his learning from a hedge-schoolmaster in the old times; and he looks
down on the narrow teaching of the National Schools; and he was once in
jail for nine months, having been taken in the very act of making
_poteen_. And Mrs. Casey comes and looks at the stepping-stones now and
again, for she is a Clare woman; and though she has lived fifty years in
Connaught, she is not yet quite reconciled to it, and would never have
made it her home if she could have seen it before she came. And some who
do not live among the bog